Dr. Carolyn Deere-Birkbeck is a Senior Researcher at the Global Economic Governance Programme at the University of Oxford where she directs GEG’s Global Trade Governance Project – a multi-year initiative to catalyse academic research and policy dialogue aimed at making the governance of the global trading system work for developing countries and sustainable development. She is also a Senior Research Associate at Oxford’s Centre for International Studies and a Resident Scholar at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Deere-Birkbeck is the founder and Chair of the Board of Directors of Intellectual Property Watch – the leading news service on international intellectual property policy debates.

Before moving to academia, Dr. Deere-Birkbeck served as an Assistant Director at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York where she was responsible for grantmaking on intellectual property, trade and sustainable development. In partnership with colleagues across the Foundation, she designed and coordinated the Foundation’s initiative to Promote a Fairer Course for Intellectual Property Policy and launched the Bellagio Series on Development and Intellectual Property Policy. During this time, Dr. Deere-Birkbeck also co-founded the Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FNTG) and served on its Steering Committee. Previously, she worked in Washington, D.C. for the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and as the Manager of the Congressional Staff Forum on International Development at the Overseas Development Council. She has been a consultant to a range of non-governmental and international organisations, including UNDP’s Office of the Human Development Report, the National Wildlife Federation, the Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policy, the Open Society Institute and the South Centre.

Dr. Deere-Birkbeck is the editor of Making Global Trade Governance Work for Development: Perspectives and Priorities from Developing Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2011), author of The Implementation Game: The TRIPS Agreement and the Global Politics of Intellectual Property Reform in Developing Countries (Oxford University Press, 2009, paperback, 2011), and the co-editor (with Dan Esty) of Greening the Americas: NAFTA’s Lessons for Hemispheric Trade (MIT Press, 2002). She holds a DPhil in International Relations (University College, Oxford), an MA in International Relations (Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies) and a degree in political economy from the University of Sydney. She holds Australian and British nationality.